The shop exists because teenagers complained. By the family’s own account, Boutique Calla Lily grew out of Isoke Couture, a boutique they opened in 2005; high school customers kept telling them St. Louis had no exclusive prom styles, so they built a store to answer that. It now runs as Calla Lily Formals at 1004 Olive Street, in the downtown core of eastern Missouri’s largest metro.
It is owned and operated by a mother and two daughters — Loretta Netterville Waheed, Dalila Waheed Spencer and Mariama Waheed — who describe the business as women-led and Black-owned and who work with clients from the first consultation to the last fitting. They started in the Delmar Loop and later expanded into the downtown showroom.
The address has its own history
1004 Olive is the Balmer and Weber Music House Co. Building, put up in 1905 to a design by H.W. Kirchner and altered in 1928 by Maritz & Young. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since August 2000. The block is a surviving piece of Music Row, the stretch of Olive between 10th and Tucker where St. Louis bought its pianos and sheet music: by 1893, seven of the city’s eighteen piano dealerships sat within those few blocks. The narrow storefront and the tall ceilings are left over from that trade.
Getting there without a highway drive
Most of the region’s formalwear inventory sits west of the city — Chesterfield and the suburban corridors. This one is downtown, a couple of blocks from the 8th & Pine MetroLink station, which is underground in the 1874 rail tunnel and served by both the Red and Blue lines. The Red Line runs from Shiloh–Scott in Illinois to Lambert Airport, so a family on the Illinois side or in north county can reach the door without getting on I-64 or I-70. For city students — Cardinal Ritter College Prep on North Spring, Central Visual and Performing Arts on South Kingshighway — it is a short cross-town trip rather than a suburban expedition.
How a visit works
This is not a walk-in-and-browse operation. Appointments are booked online in 45-minute blocks and sorted by occasion: prom, homecoming, a “little white dress” slot, and general occasion wear. Published hours have the shop closed Tuesdays, opening at 3 p.m. Thursdays, and open Sunday afternoons — call (314) 300-8280 to confirm before driving in, because listed hours for small boutiques go stale.
Three brands are confirmed on their manufacturers’ own retailer locators: Clarisse, Jovani and Mac Duggal. Jovani and Mac Duggal are the beaded, high-shine end of the prom market; Clarisse covers more of the middle. Beyond prom, the store’s own listings cover homecoming court, pageant and social-occasion gowns, dresses for bridal receptions, and tuxedo rentals — useful if a couple wants to handle both halves of the night in one stop.
They also run The Lily Club, described as a community for younger clients that goes beyond the dress itself. Take that for what it is: a small shop that treats repeat mother-and-daughter business as the whole point, in a building that was selling pianos to St. Louis families a century before it sold gowns to them.